Editor’s Note: This feature separates Ukraine’s friends from its enemies. The Order of Yaroslav the Wise has been given since 1995 for distinguished service to the nation. It is named after the Kyivan Rus leader from 1019-1054, when the medieval empire reached its zenith. The Order of Lenin was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union, whose demise Russian President Vladimir Putin mourns. It is named after Vladimir Lenin, whose corpse still rots on the Kremlin’s Red Square, more than 100 years after the October Revolution he led.
Ukraine’s Friend of the Week: Fiona Hill, former Trump adviser on Russia and Europe
As testimony continues in the U.S. House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, American politics increasingly appears to be a battlefield between two groups: foreign policy and government professionals dedicated to advancing the interests of their country and its partners versus Trump cronies compared to “hand grenades” who push strange political “drug deals.”
These are not the Kyiv Post’s personal characterizations of Trump’s inner circle (although they are apt). Rather, they are the words of former national security adviser John Bolton. We know them thanks to another former official, Fiona Hill.
Hill is an academic and foreign policy professional with deep knowledge of Russia. With Clifford Gaddy, she literally wrote the book on Russian President Vladimir Putin (“Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin”), whose actions she has not shied away from criticizing. For that reason, her April 2017 appointment as senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council under the seemingly Putinophilic Trump came as a surprise.
Hill took that job out of a sense of duty, an unnamed friend told the Guardian. She lasted for longer than many expected, only departing the Trump Administration this summer. During over two years on the job, Hill aimed to craft a Russia policy tougher than that of the Obama administration. Her resignation was a clear loss for the United States.
When Hill was subpoenaed to testify before the House of Representatives special committees on impeachment, she also did her duty, giving investigators a fascinating window into the churning chaos of the Trump Administration.
In nearly 10 hours of testimony on Oct. 14, Hill painted a picture of a topsy-turvy White House where professionals find themselves sidelined by political hacks appointed for their loyalty to Trump.
According to multiple U.S. media, her statement provided further evidence that members of the latter camp had pressured top Ukrainian officials to investigate Trump’s likely opponent in the 2020 presidential election, former Vice President Joe Biden.
In particular, Hill described a July meeting with Ukrainian officials at the White House in which U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland allegedly offered a meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in return for Kyiv opening an investigation into Biden.
That meeting proved so shocking that Bolton instructed Hill to inform the National Security Council’s chief lawyer, the New York Times reported.
“I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and (acting White House Chief of Staff Mick) Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton said.
According to Hill, he had no gentler words to describe the role of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has waged a shadow campaign to push Ukraine to investigate Biden.
“Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” he reportedly said.
Hill is certainly not the only “professional” who attempted to do good work in Trump’s third-rate circus of a White House. Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, also positioned himself as someone trying to advance the interests of the U.S. and Ukraine.
But the so-called Trump-Ukraine scandal has revealed that Volker too had a role in pressing Ukraine to engage in political interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
In a White House defined by nepotism, corruption, and shallow self-interest, Fiona Hill demonstrated how one can put country above politics and the greater good above self-interest and personal career aspirations.
She did her best to construct an effective Russia policy under Trump. Then she gave an honest account of his inner circle. Now we can only hope that she and other professionals will prevail in this battle for the soul of American politics.
For this reason, she is Ukraine’s friend of the week and deserves the Order of Yaroslav the Wise.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff
Was Trump trying to use military aid and a possible meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to get Ukraine to open an investigation into Joe Biden? Does that constitute an illegal quid pro quo.
Well, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney has news for you.
“We do that all the time with foreign policy,” he told journalists on Oct. 17.
This isn’t the first inappropriate behavior by Mulvaney. In May, he placed Sondland, Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry in charge of managing relations between the U.S. and Ukraine, according to the Washington Post. They would go on to bypass official foreign policy channels and the U.S. government’s real experts to advance Trump’s interests in Kyiv.
The men came to call themselves the “three amigos” — though Ukraine hardly has reason to see them as friends.
Mulvaney is also no “amigo” to Ukraine. As a result of his actions, Sondland, Volker and Perry would all push Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 presidential election on the side of Trump, a disaster for Kyiv’s relations with Washington (as well as for U.S. foreign policy and American political ethics).
That placed desperately needed military aid on the chopping block and threatened to entangle U.S. support for Ukraine, an issue that largely transcends party lines, in partisan bickering.
As chief of staff, Mulvaney has proven to be the perfect yes-man — largely acquiescent to Trump, with little dedication to longstanding U.S. foreign policy and few clear political positions.
However, at this point, one has to wonder whether Mulvaney is even a true “amigo” to the U.S. president. During an Oct. 17 press conference, the bumbling White House official openly admitted to journalists that the Trump administration was indeed linking military aide to the Ukrainian government’s willingness to open politically motivated investigations — not exactly a great defense against such accusations.
But, no worries. Because “that is absolutely appropriate,” Mulvaney said. Convincing!
Oddly, Mulvaney also suggested that one of the reasons for holding up military aide was Trump’s desire for Kyiv to probe the private cyber security firm CrowdStrike, which investigated Russia’s 2015-2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s servers.
Trump believes that CrowdStrike is owned by a wealthy Ukrainian and that there is a missing DNC server that may be in Ukraine. This is a conspiracy theory with no factual basis.
If Mulvaney were a character in a novel about a U.S. presidential administration, we would say that his character lacked realism. How could one person contain such multitudes of dishonestly, incompetence and proneness to gaffes?
But this is the Trump Administration, a homeland for these characters. Bolton might have been too generous in describing Mulvaney as an official pushing a “drug deal.” Dealing drugs requires business acumen and a degree of professionalism.
It’s not hard to understand why the Kyiv Post has chosen Mick Mulvaney as Ukraine’s foe of the week. But he could easily be America’s foe. And it increasingly appears that Trump should consider him a foe too.
Enjoy your Order of Lenin, Mick. You’re gonna need it.
